


Mark Off Each Day (And Laugh About What We've Lost)

by opheliahyde



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Backstory, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-08
Updated: 2011-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-17 00:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9296219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opheliahyde/pseuds/opheliahyde
Summary: She blames the curse and thinks,this is what you married into, Carol, better toughen up and get used to it, this is your life now.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for djkiwi2576 's prompt in _The Women of The Vampire Diaries_ comment-fic meme. The prompt was _I'm not as clueless as you think_. I tried to make this short, but it got away with me because I have so many Lockwood family headcanons, it's kind of ridiculous, so I really couldn't resist this prompt. Lots of love to my beta scorpiod.

This is what she married into. The wealth, the prestige, the _elite._ It was where she was aiming to be ever since she was old enough to remember her mother drilling it into her head, like a mantra, _marry well, Carol, marry well._ It was very important, since Mystic Falls fell into two categories; the Founding Families and everyone else, and Richard Lockwood was the best catch of them all. This is what she married into, she realized when the secrets kept piling up and making her head spin with every new revelation. This is what she married into, she knew when Richard told her about the curse because husbands don’t keep secrets from their wives. This is what she married into, she tells herself the first time yells at her so loud his face goes red and scares her into locking herself up in their bedroom, then pours herself a drink to help her sleep, her hands shaking and the liquor spilling. She blames the curse and thinks, _this is what you married into, Carol, better toughen up and get used to it, this is your life now._

 

 

 

“I want you to watch out for this one,” Vivien Lockwood says, picking Tyler up and tucking him up in her lap, tickling under his arms and grinning into his baby fine hair. She’s warm and sweet, everything a grandmother should be, and Carol hates her.

“I think I know to look after my own son,” Carol says and grimaces at her tone, annoyed that she can’t keep her pleasant but fake polite way about herself around Richard’s mother, still feeling like the girl she was not so many years ago, still feeling not good enough. But she _is_ , she just needs to keep telling herself that. Vivien Lockwood may be beloved by the town, but they don’t know what Carol knows, they don’t know what happens to Vivien every full moon, they don’t know the real Vivien. “But thank you for your concern,” Carol manages to say nicely, without a hint of malice in her voice. She smiles.

Something darkens in Vivien’s face, a serious look Carol had only seen once and that was at her engagement party, when she pulled her aside and asked her not to marry her son. It had just made her feel inadequate and not suitable, like she had felt her whole life, just plain not good enough. Carol narrows her eyes. She will not be told she’s not good enough to be a mother.

“I mean it,” Vivien says, pulling Tyler closer to her in a way that makes Carol want to snatch him up out of her arms and carry him away. But everyone’s here, a family gathering in honor of Tyler’s first birthday and it would look if suspicious Carol suddenly ran and hid with him in one of the many rooms in her house. And Nathaniel, Richard’s first youngest brother, watches her like a hawk from his dark corner, taking a sip from his glass and acting in the strange, unsettling way that always sends shivers down her spine. “You need to _watch out_ for him, I won’t always be here to do it,” Vivien finishes, staring intently at Carol; it makes her skin feel itchy and tight.

Carol stands up and brushes her skirt down, having just about enough of the social niceties she can take. “Who asked you to, anyway?” she says nastily, feeling childish and immature, but she can’t help it. She stops herself before taking Tyler away from his grandmother, can’t seem to make herself step over that line of rudeness, and diverts her path out towards the backyard.

She feels a hand grab her elbow, stopping her in her tracks. Carol turns around and catches Nathaniel’s intense stare. “You should listen to her,” he says, his voice gruff and stern, like he’s old enough to be her father and there’s not just a year gap between their ages. “She’s not saying it for her health, you have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

Carol sneers. “Maybe you people should stop telling me what to do,” she says, looking down at the hold he has on her elbow. “And let go of me, before I call my husband in here and you have to deal with him. I will not be bullied.”

Nathaniel tightens his grip and leans closer. “I think you and me should have a talk about your husband, and-”

“Natie,” Vivien says, materializing at his side with Tyler on her hip, his thumb in his mouth, a habit Carol tried tirelessly to break with no avail. “That’s enough. Leave the poor girl alone.”

And he does, his hand sliding away from her arm and his look softens, almost cowed. Carol steps back and turns away, making her escape and forgetting she left Tyler with them until she makes it outside and breathes in fresh air, and by then, it’s too late.

She decides to settle into the lawn chair next to Richard’s second youngest brother, George’s fiancée, Amelia, and watches with her as Richard and George toss around a football, playing rougher with each other than Carol had ever seen played on TV in the professional leagues. Mason chases after them, wide-eyed and barely in high school and full to the brim with hero worship for Richard, and Carol has to look away when his older brothers crash into him with a force that should have broken bones.

The unease of her earlier conversation lurks in the back of her mind, fermenting and sneaking out into her forethoughts when she watches Mason go down and Richard smiles.

 

 

 

Tyler is twelve when Vivien dies and he locks himself up in his room for days afterwards.

The house is almost oppressive in its silence, so big and empty with no signs of life, like a tomb, a mausoleum in the honor of Vivien‘s memory. Carol walks it alone, dusting and re-arranging things because she needs to do something, needs to keep herself occupied and keep herself from pouring another drink.

Tyler comes out of his room for the funeral, a zoned-out look in his eyes as he walks like a zombie, slow and creeping and not making a sound. She holds his hand throughout the service and she’s not sure he even notices.

Richard comes home late that night, swaying and looking like he got into a bar fight with two black eyes, a split lip, and bruises around his neck the shape of handprints. His own hands are bloodied and bruised with cuts decorating his knuckles. Carol sits him down and tries to tend to him, but Richard pushes her away with more force than necessary and she stumbles back, catching herself before she falls.

“Don’t,” he says, looking down at her with strange, cold eyes. “Don’t expect to see my family anytime soon.” Then he turns on his heel and slams the door to his office closed, and Carol hears the lock click.

She doesn’t know what to do anymore, she wasn’t made to fix things, it’s just not in her DNA. And she misses Vivien, more than she thought she would, and she needs her, more than she ever realized.

Carol collapses in the chair Richard vacated and feels her eyes sting, a sob escaping her lips before he has a chance to silence it, and then the tears come, pouring down her cheeks hot and wetly as her eyes burn and her lungs hurt to exhale.

She never felt more alone.

 

 

 

The night of Career Night at the school, Richard comes home alone and in one of his moods. Carol blames the curse, it’s always the curse when he gets like this. She downs the bourbon in her glass and puts it in the sink before he sees.

“When Tyler gets home, tell him I want to see him,” he tells her, and she has to quell the natural reaction to refuse; that’ll get her nowhere with Richard.

“Why?” she asks instead. “What happened?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Richard says, dodging her questions and her right to answers like she doesn’t matter, like she isn’t one half of this partnership, like she isn’t Tyler’s mother. “I’ll handle it, just tell me when he gets here.” Then he disappears down the hall.

Carol waits up for Tyler without any intention of telling Richard when he gets there and a part of her hope he never comes home, that he chose to stay the night at Matt Donovan’s house like she knows he does when he can’t take it anymore. She’s glad he has an escape, she wishes she had one, too.

Maybe this is what Vivien meant when she said she didn’t want Carol to marry her son, maybe if she hadn’t been such a stubborn, headstrong girl with stars in her eyes, she would have listened.

Tyler comes home late and he slams the door when he walks in, ruining any chance of Carol sneaking him inside without Richard knowing. “I hope he’s home,” he says when he sees her. “I want to talk to him.”

Carol sighs and wants to bury her face in her hands. “He wants to talk to you, too.”

“Good,” Tyler says, and she can see the defiance in his eyes, the anger burning through him as his features harden and turn sharp. He looks older and meaner. He doesn’t look like her little boy anymore, he reminds her of Nathaniel, that same gruff attitude invading his every movement, the same distaste for Richard in his tone. “You have no _idea_ what he pulled tonight.”

Carol can’t say anything back because she hears Richard’s footsteps walking up the hallway and then they’re at each other’s throats in an instant, Tyler confronting his father and Richard not backing down an inch. It reminds Carol of when she used to watch Richard and his brothers play football, the violent and aggressive way they pummeled each other. Tyler and Richard aren’t touching, not yet, but she can see it like a vision in her mind’s eye. She can barely make out what happened through the yelling, something about a fight that involved Jeremy Gilbert that ended horribly. Then Tyler calls his father a psychopath and Richard smacks him across the face, and Tyler retaliates with a left hook hitting his father’s nose, blood spraying and splattering across his pressed button-down.

“I want you out,” Richard says, holding onto his nose, cracking it back in place. “I want you out of this house.”

“Don’t worry,” Tyler says, cupping his cheek. “I’m gone.”

They both go their separate ways: Richard down the hall and Tyler out the door. They leave her alone in the middle of the kitchen, not sure what she just witnessed, not sure she can handle what she just witnessed.

She pours herself a glass of wine with shaking hands to calm her nerves and climbs the stairs to her room, hoping sleep will make everything clearer in the morning.

 

 

 

Richard dies and she’s devastated, but at the same time she feels weightless, a buoyancy that feels a lot like freedom and it terrifies her. She doesn’t know what it means, or even what it says about her, but it makes her cry harder as she clutches a pillow to her chest, curled up in the middle of a bed that’s only hers now.

 

 

 

Tyler comes home late one night with a wrecked look on his face and she can’t stop herself, she can’t handle this distance anymore. Carol knows when someone is keeping secrets from her because she keeps them from everyone around her. “What happened?” she asks.

Tyler startles, like he didn’t realize she was there, like he didn’t expect her to be there. “Nothing,” he says, like an automated reply he’s programmed just for her. She’s grown tired of hearing it. “I’m gonna go to bed, mom.”

“You don’t look well,” she says, stepping closer and reaching out to feel his forehead. “You’re pale and shaking.”

He pushes her hand away. “It’s just been a rough couple of weeks. I’ll get over it.”

Carol stands there and stares at him, measuring him with her eyes, noting the changes she can only see after close inspection. He looks tired and defeated, a kind of heaviness that’s never weighed on him before bringing him down. “Tell me what happened, Tyler,” she says, making her tone more firm, even as she feels weak; a failure who didn’t even notice the marked change in her son until now.

He backs away. “You won’t understand,” he says, his eyes looking down. “And you’ll freak out. I really don’t need you freaking out on me right now.”

Carol takes a deep breath and moves closer, putting her hands on his shoulders. “Try me,” she says.

Carol doesn’t remember when she made it a conscious decision not to tell him about the curse. She remembers when Richard decided, when they talked about having kids. She remembers thinking it was strange, not wanting to tell them about something that affected them so deeply, but she didn’t know what it felt like, she didn’t understand, so she let Richard guide her. But Richard died and she still didn’t tell him, even as she watched his anger increase by the day.

She realizes her folly now. Now, Vivien’s words make sense to her, _you have to watch out for him._

This is all her fault.

She takes his hand and strokes her hand over his face, cupping his cheek, when really all she wants to do is pull him in and hold on like he was still small and that still happened, she wants to go back to a time when all was not formal and stiff between them. “You could have come to me,” Carol says, holding Tyler’s gaze. “I would’ve understood.”

Something flickers in his eyes, a realization that feels like a cut. “I didn’t think I could,” Tyler says, his voice small and eyes wide open, and Carol can remember them set in a smaller face, that same scared look in their dark depths that begs to be fixed. “I didn’t think you knew, I didn’t want you to know.” Something inside of her shatters then, splintering her resolve and she throws her arms around him and tugs him in, folding him in her embrace, the safest place she can provide.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers, kissing the top of his head. “I promise it’ll be better, I’ll make sure of it.” 


End file.
